[IAEP] Sugar UI font

[Chris Leonard]

On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 5:42 AM, Sridhar Dhanapalan
<sridhar at laptop.org.au> wrote:
> Our first thought was to use one of the Australian schools handwriting
> fonts [1]. We're currently experimenting with the Queensland Compact
> Bold font [2], as it is more legible than the others. However, any
> cursive font is less readable on a screen. Feedback so far has been
> primarily negative.
>
> What I think we need is a legible sans-serif font.
>
> A lot of the freeware fonts out there are of low quality, incomplete
> and not unicode compliant.
>
>
> [1] http://www.schoolfonts.com.au/
> [2] http://dev.laptop.org.au/issues/996
>

Just a thought I would like to throw into the mix while you are still
in the investigation phase.  You might want adding a selection
criteria that the font should be capable of representing of any
unusual characters that may have been introduced in the orthography of
aboriginal languages.

A common pattern is that native languages (frequently oral without
written forms) has a wriiten form developed during the colonial period
(often by missionaries seeking to translate the Bible).  This
sometimes leads to an alphabet and orthography that is drawn from the
(typically Latin) alphabet of the colonizing culture.  However, in
order to represent certain sounds unique to the indigenous language,
additional characters are introduced.  By way of example, a number of
indigenous languages of Mexico introduce a "crossed I" (ɨ) into the
alphabet to represent a particular variation of the "i" sound.  I know
nothing of the orthography of Australian native languages and so this
may not end up being a concern, but it should be taken into
consideration.

If you want a font standard that will continue to serve Australia when
indigenous language localization becomes an element of your program
(as it hopefully will someday)  you should make sure that you do not
lock into an option that will limit your abilities to represent
aboriginal languages in future.

Warmest Regards.

cjl
Sugar Labs Translation Team Coordinator